The Escazu Agreement was signed in 2018 by a group of 24 Latin American countries at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio, and has been ratified by 17 participants since. It entered into full force on Earth Day, 2021. This new framework was the first of its kind to protect environmental human rights defenders, and is the first multilateral environmental treaty to be implemented in Latin America and the Caribbean. It emphasizes the right for communities to access information regarding environmental concerns, and includes specific provisions for the protection of environmental defenders. Despite this important legal step towards a framework for environmental justice. Latin America remains by far the most dangerous region in the world for environmental defenders, with 166 killings recorded in 2023. The primary cause of these killings stems from conflicts around natural resources and their defense.

Chile is among the states that have ratified the agreement, but the recent disappearance of the Mapuche environmental defender Julia Chuñil has highlighted the gaps between the legal framework and its ability to affect material change on the ground. Over the last few years, the indigenous Mapuche peoples of Araucanía in Southern Chile have been in intense conflict with the Chilean state over environmental protection from logging and industrial farming, as well as demands for the return of ancestral land. 

Chuñil was leading community campaigns for the defense of a forest in Mafil, Los Rios, Araucania, from logging interests and real estate development. She went missing on November 8th, 2024, after leaving her home with her dog Cholito. According to one online petition, local entrepreneurs made several death threats before she vanished. She had previously warned her relatives: “if I do not return, you know who did this.” 

The disappearance of Julia Chuñil has sparked outrage and ignited a movement to demand an investigation among Chilean civil society. In the context of The Escazú Agreement, this event stands as a reminder of how while international legal frameworks are important in the protection of environmental defenders, local territorial conflicts cannot be solved through one sweeping treaty. The roots of these relentless attacks on environmental defenders, who are often indigenous peoples, lies in their persistent resistance to extractivism. 

In the case of the Mapuche, such resistance to colonization has deep historical roots. Nearly five hundred years ago at the beginning of Spanish conquest in 1537, the Mapuche refused to submit to the Conquistadors and instead fought a century-long war against the Spanish crown. The Mapuche have continuously resisted attacks on their land and its sovereignty up to the present. Across Latin America, indigenous communities are often at the forefront of the struggles against ecologically catastrophic extractive industries, which comprises only a small blip in what has been a five hundred year history of resilience and environmental stewardship in the face of colonization.

While The Escazú Agreement attempted to introduce provisions that specifically address these kinds of issues, ending the impunity of the extractive interests committing these crimes will continue to depend on the demands of grassroots social movements and local communities. Within the context of the continuous dependence that many Latin American countries have on raw material exports, environmental justice from above is a hollow shell without strong movements for environmental justice from below. This implores us to take up the responsibility of vigorously echoing demands for an environmental justice that exists not only as a part of a treaty, but as a social reality across our territories. We must lift our voices to call for an end to the impunity afforded to those who persecute environmental defenders. All environmentalists, defenders of indigenous rights, and people of conscience in the world should ceaselessly amplify: ¿Dónde está Julia Chuñil?